“You want centimeters or millimeters, Admiral?” Clancy asked. “Or would you prefer microns?”
“Just bring us across her bow, and I’ll be happy. Mr. Deniken, are you ready?”
“All guns standing by,” the Tactics and Gunnery Officer confirmed. “Ready for your order.”
“A little longer, if you please.” He touched an intercom stud. “Mr. Graham? Status?”
“All systems nominal, sir,” Graham reported. “Shields cycling at nine-six-fiver. The drives are looking good. Damage control parties are ready.” He paused. “Would this be a good time to wish I was still back on good old Nargrast, freezing my butt off with Murragh and the rest?”
“Luck of the draw, Mr. Graham,” Tolwyn told him. “Flight Deck, prepare for launch operations on my signal. All stations, preparatory.” Tolwyn waited a long moment, savoring the feeling of command. “Mr. Vivaldi, you may hoist our colors, if you please.”
“Aye aye, sir.” In the days of sailing ships on Earth, a warship trying for the kind of surprise Mjollnir sought today might sail into combat range flying the flag of another nation, a legitimate ruse de guerre. But before the first broadside, the false colors would be hauled down and the real national flag hoisted. Mjollnir was doing the same thing electronically. Her transponder had broadcast the Identification Friend or Foe signal for the Karga, but now Vivaldi switched that transponder signal off and brought up Mjollnir’s new code, identifying her as a ship of the Landreich.
The waiting was over. The battle was beginning…
“Now!” Tolwyn said. “Execute Ragnarok…Now!”
Strakha 800, VF-401 “Shadow Cats”
Near Orbital Dock Asharazhal, Baka Kar System
1216 hours (CST)
“Ragnarok, Ragnarok, Ragnarok. I say again, Ragnarok!”
The Norse battle between the gods and the giants, a fitting code-word for the order to start the attack, thundered in Bondarevsky’s ears. He activated his commlink. “That’s the signal, Shadow Cats!” he said. “Attack designated targets at will.”
His hand reached out to drop the cloak that screened his Strakha from detection. The heavy fighter slowly emerged from its hiding-place in a bent portion of space, hanging bare meters above the hull of the dreadnought. As the Strakha’s targeting sensors registered a lock, Jason Bondarevsky opened fire at point-blank range.
They had adapted this portion of the battle plan from the attack Banfeld’s pirates had launched against the carrier at Vaku. But they had two advantages the pirates had lacked. Their stealth technology allowed the Shadow Cats to place themselves in close to the target before the attack…and the shield emitter arrays of the orbital dock and the massive dreadnought were far better targets than those found on a carrier.
The eight Strakhas had stationed themselves directly adjacent to eight different emitter batteries, six on the dreadnought, two more on the station. Hidden, they had reduced speed to close to zero, using thrusters to keep station against microgravitic influences but otherwise simply matching orbits perfectly with the Kilrathi station and its monstrous consort. Normally fighters tried to operate using high speeds and rapid vector changes, using their maneuverability to protect them from the dangers of Double-A-S. But that limited the time available to achieve a target lock and fire.
Today, though, the situation was different. The Strakhas decloaked and opened fire, pouring sustained energy blasts directly into the crucial emitters at point-blank range before the Kilrathi even knew there were enemies in a position to fire. Neither the station nor the dreadnought had been maintaining shields at combat strength. They were set at low power levels to screen out minor radiation or random chunks of space debris. So the sudden, overwhelming attack quickly punched through the protective screens and smashed into the arrays. In seconds there were huge gaps left in the Kilrathi shielding that would take long minutes to circumvent by reworking their power grid.
In the meantime, station and dreadnought lay wide open to attack.
As he continued to fire into the emitters, Bondarevsky saw Mjollnir making a slow, ponderous turn right across the bows of the dreadnought, where the shields were failing fast. Fighters and bombers were streaming from the two launch bays as fast as Boss Marchand could cycle them out, led by the Raptors of Etienne Montclair’s Crazy Eights and the powerful Vaktoths in Commander Lin Dan-Giang’s Black Lion squadron.
Then the carrier opened fire with her main guns.
Though not intended to engage in close space combat, the carrier had been well-equipped with batteries to ensure the destruction of any smaller fighting ship that managed to slip through her guard. They had only been able to get six of the eight massive laser turrets back in service during the refit, but Tolwyn had angled the ship so that four of those six turrets had firing arcs. They all opened up at once, and a moment later numerous smaller beams contributed to the massive assault. That had been the project Deniken had been wrapped up in since leaving Vaku. He had adapted the computer program that handled the largely automated point defense lasers, which were supposed to knock down incoming missiles or fighters that closed too near. Now they were slaved to the main guns, and if their individual power output wasn’t much against the heavy armor that protected the dreadnought, together they increased the already furious energy that washed over the enemy ship’s bow.
Armor sloughed off under the intense bombardment, but of course the dreadnought had plenty of armor to spare. Now it was a race between the Mjollnir’s ability to pour out sustained energy fire, the dreadnought’s staying power, and the Kilrathi crew’s response time as they tried to man battle stations and bring the leviathan into the fight.
No one expected them to just sit there and take it for very long.
Command Bridge, KIS Vorghath
Docked, Orbital Station Asnarazhal, Baka Kar System
1221 hours (CST)
Dawx Jhorrad emerged from the elevator to find the cavernous bridge of the Vorghath in the grip of confusion and near-panic. Striding purposefully toward his command station, he cuffed two enlisted ratings in passing and bared his fangs at an engineering officer who seemed completely out of his depth in the face of the crisis.
“Report!” he snapped, dropping into the command chair and turning the baleful glare of his mismatched eyes, one real, one bionic, on his first officer.
“Karga has launched an attack,” Khrell nar Dhollas announced without any of the honorifics that were usually addressed to a commanding officer receiving a report. He had always resented the fate that had placed him, a Baron of the Empire, under the command of a commoner, and his contempt showed even when he was performing ship’s business. But he was a skilled officer, and Jhorrad allowed him a measure of freedom. Neither of them could change who or what they were. “Just before firing, he changed his transponder configuration and signal. The identification is for a Landreich warship.”
“Apes!” Jhorrad spat.
“A squadron of Strakhas was also involved in the initial attack, decloaking and opening fire on our emitter banks. Shields are down across the bow as far back as bulkhead one-twelve. Additional fighters are launching.”
“Our response?”
“As yet, we have not been able to return fire,” Dhollas said. “Generators were off-line and the crew was unprepared.” That sounded like an accusation. It was true that he hadn’t allowed the first officer to take the ship to alert status when the three ape ships had appeared at the jump point. At the time, there had seemed to be no particular reason for alarm. Two destroyers and a cruiser offered little threat. They would not have been able to penetrate the defensive perimeter, and even if they had tried there would have been plenty of time for Vorghath to go on alert status.